Meteor shower

I have meant to post this for way too long to let it go unrequited. (is that a legal word here?). We had a Chocolate lab puppy we named Maggie. Had her from wee puppy and she was definitely part of the family. I was amazed at her degree of ability in retrieval. She did it by herself for fun, as much as she did with me. She could retrieve from land to land, From water to land, and from water to water (if I were in a boat). It was a good thing we had a king sized bed as she slept with us. Usually between us at the bottom of the bed. It would take me 20-30 minutes to clean the lawn of all the stuff she had “retrieved” onto the lawn before I could mow it. She would show up with a full sized 2x4x8 and put it on the lawn. I have no idea where it came from. Our neighbor Jackie called me one day to ask if I had any Miracle Gro fertilizer in a box. I said I don’t think so, maybe Mary had gotten some….and then Jackie said, no…the box from my steps I had put out a few minutes ago.

Maggie got hit by a car one night and we still miss her, but she left some wonderful memories

So, anyway, there was a big meteor shower predicted…an annual one that I was familiar with. Living in a log cabin in the mountains and fairly nicely protected from light, our vision of the night sky is only obscured by the mountains around us. We had a nice, double wide, two person rope hammock out by the pond, and in nice weather it was a common delight to lay in the hammock and watch the night sky. This meteor shower showed some wonderful promise and I looked forward to it. It was so impressive that the timing was on the daily news and on tv, and esp on NASA channel. As soon as it got dark the media was awash with discussion and videos. NASA had a radiotelescope on TV and when one would enter the atmosphere (ionosphere in this case) it would make a zinging sound not unlike some MOOG sounds back in the early days of that synthesizer. Intriguing.

The peak of the shower was predicted to be 3 A.M., Mary went to bed and set her alarm to wake her at 3. I stayed up to watch the news and when that was over, I stepped out onto the back porch to see if there was any happening. I saw 5 at one time. Hurriedly, I grabbed a sleeping bag and put it on top of the hammock and then got on top to watch. It was mind boggling. I had never/will never see that many meteors again in my lifetime. Mary came out at 3 and got into her sleeping bag while to me it was still warm enough to stay out on top. We watched for about half an hour when Maggie decided she wanted to join us…so, like a 3 yr old she crawled up onto the hammock and wobbling, got into the space between Mary and me. It took a while for that to calm down and we were back to paying close attention to the sky. We had been on the hammock for some hours, and probably one since Maggie got on board, when all of a sudden I felt something push against my back. Like I said, we live in the mountains, and cougars and bears are not a real uncommon happening. I stiffened and listened….no deep breath sounds, no unusual odors, and no activity from Maggie as she would certainly been aware of something strange way ahead of Mary and me. I had to get Mary to quiet and listen, but nothing from her either. The pushing got harder…Much harder…when I finally realized that Maggies fidgeting and her weight added to both Mary and mine…cause the pipes at each end of the hammock to collapse and bend inward, and we were, in fact, now laying on the ground. The sights were so impressive we stayed there until daylight ended our show.